I have, right now, sitting on my hard drive, the beta version of the Sylvanian Families - The Fairyland Pendant translation patch.

If anyone wants to test it, just PM me. The dialogue is 100% done, graphics are done...even added a couple of lines to my VWF that fixed an annoying overdraw error. The game is completely in English, with no bugs that I know of, but it pays to be sure.

Side note: it still glitches a little on bgb. Don't know why, don't know how. The text is legible nonetheless.

So...any progress to report? Aerdan? Tauwasser? Strag0/lifeinanalog?

This is kinda my first time beta testing anything, so bear with me. >_>

Yeah, it's pretty lame. ^_^; The later ones are better, though; nothing earth-shattering, but at least the characters are 1. cute and 2. don't stab you in the back given the slightest opportunity, like most of their Animal Crossing brethren.

There's a few sidequests, and it's possible to finish the game without seeing any of them, but they add a little bit of extra depth.

BTW, Tauwasser inspired me to fix the VWF bugs. They don't show up at all in VBA, but they'll fudge the text a bit every now and then in bgb or on actual hardware. I'm sending you a PM with a little mini-patch that seems to fix the problems. I didn't bother making it an IPS or an RUP or whatever, so you'll have to insert it manually into the ROM with a hex editor.

As for the fan factor, interestingly enough, there are a couple of questions in the Sylvanian Quiz that aren't answered in the game, like Katrina's dancing hobby or the name of the rock in the middle of the lake (though you can clearly make out its shape on the map, which doesn't actually look like the game world at all). Other than that, the game can be played and enjoyed(?) with no previous knowledge of the franchise.

I mentioned this before, but the chief reason I put so much effort into it is mostly an act of atonement for hypocrisy. There I was, ranting and screaming about Tokyopop and Dark Horse's work (or lack thereof) on the .hack manga and novels and the Trigun manga respectively, and at the same time I was going to just throw together a translation of this game purely as a test of my skills ("it's a kids' game, so how tough could it be?") with no regard for the official English-language material. I had met the enemy, and he was me. So after I rejiggered Atlas into my own personal weapon of mass translation (having neither the skills nor courage at the time to attempt my own utility), I spent the next nine months on and off hammering a translation into existence.

So it's an act of self-flagellation. Doesn't mean I don't feel pretty darn proud of what I managed to pull off doing it.

(Funny trivia. Until just about the last minute, the fairies' parting "We'll be waiting for you, Aster!" was ended with an ellipsis instead of an exclamation mark. This somehow made them unintentionally creepy. XD)